"The idea, at least in rock or pop culture, that the singer is on some pedestal in Speaker's Corner—I’ve just never subscribed to that. I'm not a poet. I'm not up onstage to get something off my chest. I'm making musical statements, or, most of the time, musical questions for people to figure out, and I'm not going to get in the way of that."

Rumpus: One more question that I always ask. What do you like to read?

Amidon: I've been reading early Evelyn Waugh, like Decline and Fall, his early books. My friend Thomas got me into that stuff. And I love Herman Melville, everything from Moby-Dick onward. Especially a very late book called the Confidence Man. It's fantastic. It's ridiculous. I like to carry around extremely pretentious books, and I don't know if I can read them, but if I hold them near me, it imbues me with a sense of powerful intelligence. I love Henry James. The Wings of the Dove. Fantastic book. Reading books is fantastic. I didn't do it until ten years ago. It's great. I'm just reading a hilarious book right now called The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. It was a short novel, Irish, written in the 1930's or 40's, very funny. It's somewhat unreadable, but it's good to have nearby.

Natasha Lyonne, star of the new Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, talks about her two favorite prison books with The A.V. Club.